‘And mine,’ said Nancy, realising that she meant it. To think that she’d taken Sid’s clumsy courtship for the real thing, and then she’d been stuck with having to marry him. Well, she’d paid the price for that all right. And Stan Hathaway, the smooth-talking local boy made good, who’d given her the push without a second thought, after having led her on good and proper. How wet behind the ears they seemed. They’d known nothing of the world or how it worked. They were full of hot air. Here before her was a man who was worth far more than the two of them put together. Not to mention all those callow young soldiers she’d gone for drinks with since then – and sometimes a little more besides. They didn’t begin to compare to Gary Trenton.

‘Gary,’ she began, wondering if she was going to sound too forward. ‘You mean everything to me, I know that now.’

‘And you to me,’ he replied. ‘Don’t upset yourself, Nancy, I’d do anything not to upset you; that wasn’t what I meant to happen at all.’ He ran a gentle hand across her cheek. ‘Give me one of those big smiles of yours. If this is our last evening together for a while, then show me that happy face so I can remember it.’

She looked up at him from beneath carefully mascaraed eyelashes. ‘Would you really like something to remember me by, Gary?’ The rest of the room seemed to be far away, and she felt as if it was just the two of them, cocooned from the world for one intense moment.

‘Of course … ah, Nancy.’ He suddenly caught on to what she meant. ‘Nancy, really? Are you sure? I don’t want to pressure you into doing something you don’t want to, something that you might regret in the morning. I didn’t tell you to try to make you do that. You know me better than that, don’t you? I’d never force you to do anything you didn’t want to, anything you weren’t sure about.’

She held his gaze. ‘Gary, you’re wonderful and kind and a real gentleman. That’s why I liked you to begin with. I know you’d never try to trick me into bed, and that’s why I admire you.’ She knew she was blushing in the low light of the pub room. ‘But I’m sure. I’ve never been more sure of anything. That’s if … if you’d like to, that is.’ Suddenly she was afraid she’d been too bold, been too fast too soon. Yet if not now, then when? What if this really was their last evening together? The alternative, of not spending a night together ever, would be far, far worse.